Making a HDD array - hardware or software raid?

[cougem]

So I've got a hell of a lot of storage, BUT they're all on IDE drives. How lame.

So what I'm thinking of is investing in a few SATA drives and making a RAID array, probably 5. 5 because there's little chance of me losing my data, and it's expandable. Also I think it's pretty universally supported. Thing is, how do I do this?

RAID controller cards seem INCREDIBLY expensive, and when I look to those dedicated boxes they're just as bad, even without the hard drives. So I was thinking, are they really much better than me buying a cheapish A64 procssor and RAID motherboard and making my own box with linux on it, and just using RAID like that? That would be software raid wouldn't it? Are the RAID controllers you see that much better than a processor would be at doing this stuff? What are the performance differences? I mean sluggishness doesn't REALLY matter on a dedicated box really.

Anyway, what do you guys think?

Thanks,

-James

[phextwin]

Cards with the inbuilt XOR processor dont have to rely on the CPU for the parity calculations, so writing data will be faster and less taxing on the system.

As for linux RAID5, are you sure it supports online array expansion? I always thought you had to wipe it if you wanted to add more drives - been a while since i have looked at it though.

Linux RAID supports IDE drives too.

Finally RAID is not a backup - remember this, keep a seperate copy of all your important files

[gmat]

Hot swap or online expansion is only available to host controllers, i think
Host controllers are noticeably faster, the processors on them are highly specialized units. They manage the command queues, and buffer the I/O properly so the main system is relieved from these tasks.
What you must assess is your needs in terms of load: what are you using your storage for.
If the intended use is database server, file / app server with many concurrent users, then SATA is not enough - SCSI RAID is the only way at the moment (until SAS is out). Multiuser loads are not comparable to single user ones.
If it's only for a single user, but you need lightning speed, take a Raptor, and backup it (like, nightly) on a USB/Firewire/NAS box (with a good old slow but huge unit inside - take a Seagate for reliability). The idea is only to run your backup solution when doing the actual backup, like nightly for example. It will be a LOT cheaper than a full-time redundant array, and even more performant (remember RAID 5 comes with a performance hit, for a single user).
If you're craving for speed stripe 2 Raptors... but really a single one is already blazingly fast. Or if you're paranoid mirror them. Either way dont go RAID5 for a single user.
RAID5 is meant for high load, multi user scenarios, where the time-to-deliver becomes essential when 400 users are hitting your server at the same time, or 10 marketing managers hit your database with huge and malformed SQL queries.
Define your needs, then we can define a more precise solution

[clone]

I currently am at 2.1 TB on my main device. Several years ago i ran win2k raid for both a 0 array and a 5 array i did have some issues with it i dont rember the exact problem this was back when 60/80GB drives were big. I ended up migrating to a promise sx6000 with 6x120ide100 via R5 and had no issues with this setup until i out grew it. It was hot swapable and has onboard memory i found it a great choice. However about 3 weeks ago i found my self down to 90 gig free. So i orderd 4x400 sata 150's and am useing the asus onboard silicon raid device on my mother board in a r0 config as i have only had this setup in production for a couple weeks i can not make a long term judgment but for right now its fast. I can not coment on stabilty as it has only been a few weeks. On a side not you said you have IDE now and raid cards arnt cheap i have the promise sx6000 on my desk maybe we can work something out. I wouldnt be looking to make a huge profit or any thing just to help you out get you started in the storage.

o ya you add 4x400 and get 1.6TB the other 500 is 2x250

[bobkoure]

If you were just looking to put all those IDE drives into service and wanted to mirror 'em for the protection that offers (no it isn't a backup, but it turns a hardware failure into a low-excitement event - and if the drives are old...) why not just get a IDE controller?
Like the promise ones (here's a quick froogle search). The IDE 100 ones start around $10, 133 around $40 (no idea how old your IDE drives are so 100 might be fine. I've used these in setting up mirrored storage in family file servers (high speed not really necessary - mostly just lots of media files) and they're fine for that.